“I don’t think so. We got jumped pretty hard coming up. There were at least six terrs waiting for us. After securing the top of the ladder, we separated and went into pursuit. That wasn’t one of my best ideas,” the SEAL admitted.
“Just make sure you live to regret it.” Mercer checked the clips on his two pistols, combining the half-empty magazines into one fully charged weapon. “Stay with Hauser. Do whatever you can for him. I saw a Coast Guard ship headed our way, probably called in by Devil Fish. Help will be here in just a few minutes.”
Mercer was almost out of the room when Krutchfield called to him. “Be careful of this guy. I had him in my sights when I pulled the trigger, but he’d moved by the time the bullets arrived. He’s the quickest bastard I’ve ever seen.”
“Thanks.” It was news Mercer didn’t need.
In the hallway, Mercer took a second to examine the trail of blood splattered on the decking. Maybe the fleeing terrorist wouldn’t be so fast anymore. With the pistol held before him, he followed the blood, keeping himself covered as best he could. As the trail led him out of the superstructure, he increased his pace, feeling that the terrorist was more interested in escaping than finishing what he’d started in the pump room.
Finally coming out into a naturally lighted corridor, the pale sun entering through long rectangular windows, Mercer realized that the terrorist wasn’t headed toward the rope ladder. They had come out on the main deck on the opposite side of the tanker and well forward of where it had been left dangling. This close to the main deck, Mercer could feel the radiant heat of the crude oil that covered it. It had been about one hundred twenty degrees when it was pumped from the ground at Prudhoe Bay and had lost little of its warmth since. It actually felt good compared to the sharp October air, but the smell was tremendous, so strong he could see the fumes rising off the slick.
Staring down the expanse of the main deck it was easy to see the footprints left by JoAnn Riggs’ last terrorist, their shape distorted as the oil slowly oozed back to cover them but distinguishable nevertheless. In the very far distance, past the manifold towers, a figure ran, favoring one leg as he moved but maintaining a good pace on the slick surface.
Mercer dashed up to the raised metal catwalk that ran down the center of the deck in hopes the dry surface would be quicker going than chasing directly after the terrorist. He was surprised, but thankful, to find an old bicycle propped up against a support stanchion, the tired-looking two-wheeler left there as a convenience to crews who needed to get to the distant bow during routine ship’s operations. Every supertanker usually carried them.
In seconds, he was gaining rapidly.
Wolf had been certain he’d heard voices as he and JoAnn Riggs were leaving the pump room. As they’d walked away, he could almost feel eyes on the back of his head, but he hadn’t turned to look. It was only after he and Riggs had gotten to the main deck, and he saw the human carnage that had once been his team, that he decided to go back into the ship and dispose of whoever was opposing them. Riggs continued to the boarding ladder and the cabin cruiser. Wolf knew that the pump room would be the logical target for a counterstrike. It was the only place on the ship to prevent her imminent destruction.
As he fled along the deck, running as best he could with the stinging wound to his thigh where Krutchfield had shot him, he realized that going back had been a critical, maybe fatal, mistake. He had abandoned his training by giving in to emotions. Even if the destruction of the Petromax Arctica was averted, he had done his job. Yet he’d returned to the pump room and gotten seriously wounded for his efforts.
Now he raced for the bow, hoping the SEAL who’d shot him would follow. If he was to die on this cursed ship, he wanted the opportunity to take out just one of the Americans.
Wolf looked behind him, hoping to see the SEAL giving chase, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a madman on a bicycle racing toward him on the elevated walkway over his head. He tossed his empty weapon onto the deck, and from the deep pocket of his cargo pants withdrew a wax-coated flare he’d carried with him since the beginning of the scuttling operation. It had been his assignment to ignite the oil lying on the deck just before he and Riggs and the rest of the team fled the vessel.
Mercer heaved the bicycle into a tight skid on the catwalk when he saw the figure below turn and toss away a machine pistol. He let the bike clatter to the deck as he stood to take careful aim with his pistol. Just before he got into a proper stance, the terrorist jerked his right hand, and a red sun burst from his fist, an acrid trail of smoke billowing from the flare he’d been carrying.
“Drop your weapon or this whole ship goes up in flames,” Wolf shouted at what he thought was a SEAL on the spidery walkway.
“You don’t need to do this. Throw the flare over the side of the ship,” Mercer countered. Wolf stood in a pool of oil about two inches deep but covering nearly four acres. Just behind him, the deck bubbled as more crude leached out of an improperly secured hatch cover.
Two hundred thousand tons of highly explosive crude oil. Two hundred kilotons. Facing his own death, Mercer absently wondered if a ton of TNT had more or less explosive force than a ton of oil. He recalled that Hiroshima had been leveled with the equivalent of twenty kilotons. Even if the ratio between TNT and oil wasn’t close, he was still standing on a bomb many times more powerful than Little Boy.
He tried to remember what Hauser had said about the gases in the storage tanks. Why did the air in the tanks have to be inert? It was a sign of Mercer’s exhaustion that he couldn’t remember what it was about oil that made the air in the tanks so important.
“Yes, I do need to do this,” Wolf shouted back, the flare waving in his hands like a Fourth of July sparkler, as mesmerizing as a cobra’s dance. “If for no other reason than to know you will die with me.”
Mercer tightened his grip on the gun, keeping the sights centered on Wolf’s chest. Then he remembered. Oil is combustible only in a narrow range of gas ratios; to burn it had to be mixed with precisely 11 percent oxygen. Too much or too little and the mixture was noncombustive unless the oil was preheated first. Hoping that the mix was in his favor and without thinking further, Mercer adjusted his aim and fired off three rapid rounds. The 9mm bullets shredded Wolf’s shoulder so that his arm swung uselessly at his side, attached to his trunk by a few scraps of flesh. The flare, its tip burning at several hundred degrees, fell from his deadened fingers, landing with a sluggish splash onto the deck.
Wolf screamed in pain and fell to his knees. He then saw the crimson flare lying beside him, the bright flame shooting from its tip like a tiny rocket motor. He tried to stand, but the wound in his leg and the damage done to his shoulder made his movements so uncoordinated that he pitched forward into the slick. In seconds, he was drowning, unable to turn his face out of the ooze.
As soon as he’d fired and saw that Wolf had dropped the flare, Mercer vaulted over the railing of the catwalk. While the flare had not yet ignited the crude, he didn’t want to push his luck. He landed hard, his legs kicking out on the slippery surface so that he fell on his backside, the impact jarring his buttocks and lower back. Agony crashed against the top of his skull. Sliding more than crawling, he reached for the incendiary, scooping it up and holding it high over his head just as the globules of oil that dripped from it burst into yellow flames that landed on his body. He used his free hand to beat out the tiny fires and carefully got to his feet, shuffling to the Arctica’s railing. He heaved the flare far out into the Strait, well beyond where the oil had leaked from her holds.
“Mud Skipper, this is Devil Fish. Come in, please.”
Mercer stood by the rail watching the flare sputter in the water and didn’t want to respond to the submarine lurking below the ship, but slowly he began to hear an alarming noise. He fished the small radio from his pocket. “This is Mud Skipper. Go ahead.”